Management Accounting Research Topics, Themes, and Future Learning

This report comprehensively examines established management accounting research, highlighting key topics such as management control systems and cost accounting. It delves into the core themes driving research in this field, including the decision-influencing role of management accounting, inter-organizational contexts, behavioral economics, competitive strategies, and the relationship between management accounting, creativity, and risk. The report emphasizes the importance of consistent results from comparable studies and the critical role of replication studies in validating research findings and building a robust knowledge base. It also explores the future learning aspects, focusing on the need for more reliable and valid research to enhance the established knowledge of management accounting. The conclusion underscores the benefits of replication studies, improved research validity, and their positive impact on both academic and professional development within the field.

MANAGEMENT ACCOUNTING
RESEARCH TOPICS, KNOWLEDGE,
THEMES, LEARNING AND CONCLUSION

ESTABLISHED MANAGEMENT ACCOUNTING RESEARCH
In management accounting, also known as managerial accounting is used by managers with
provisions of accounting information so as to inform themselves regarding cost and accounting
matter simultaneously to make better decisions. This aids the management in better assessing
better information and performance of control functions (Yang, Yu & Wang, 2016). Established
knowledge on management accounting topic would mean anything in this topic that is widely
accepted and known. This will happen when results of any research survive subsequent criticism.
Mostly published Management Accounting topics are briefly described as below:
Management Control System (MCS)
Management controls like information or practice, formal / informal / mechanistic / organic
controls are examined as few out of many than as a whole. The studies have been performed to
see influence on design, importance or use by contextual factors. Also studies evaluate
performance based on the imbalance between the management controls and contextual factors
(Sheilds, 2015). Mostly researched topics which are critical in planning and control are budgets
and budgeting measures, performance-contingent incentive systems and measurement of
performance.
These researches provide us with evidences on causes and effects of these topics. Some causes
being uncertainty of environmental and task and asymmetrical form of information like size of
organization, decentralization, and diversification (Bebbington, Unerman & O'Dwyer, 2014).
The effects that are widely researched are performance of individual or organization and its
variance with least provided attention.
Cost Accounting
Two types of enquiries are pursued in this topic, one is accuracy of estimates of cost provided by
various methods and other is environmental and organizational factors affecting organizational
success or satisfaction based on different adoptions and implementations. Both these enquiries
generate common results like the significance of support from key organizational players,
performance measurement and system of compensation, and uniformity of competitive strategy
(Sekaran & Bougie, 2016).

THEMES IN MANAGEMENT ACCOUNTING RESEARCH
Investigation of the decision-influencing role of Management Accounting
The first theme is the investigation of the decision that influence role of management accounting.
This investigative research helps identification of the influence on action of employees based on
the way their behavior and performance are monitored, measured, evaluated and rewarded. This
research majorly stresses upon how problems that arise from adverse selection process and moral
hazard can be mitigated through budgets, performance measures, performance-contingent
incentives and responsibility accounting (Van der Stede, 2016). A new research of this theme is
prejudiced on matters of subjective performance evaluation caused by leniency, favoritism,
asymmetric adjustments for risk, performance-rating compression and anchoring on prior
performance, and the effects of such a bias on the effort.
Study of Management Accounting in an inter-organizational manner contrasting existing intra-
organizational context
Management accounting in an inter-organisational context means in course of alliance, joint
ventures or supply chains, etc. The second theme studies the contrasting features of such an
inter-organisational context with that of the intra-organisational one (Sheilds, 2015). The
investigation made in this research is as to how management accounting is used in order to make
selection of any design contracts, partner, cost activities, control behavior and products, and
further to support any make-buy decisions. Tools of management accounting which are used to
make such a selection are ABC model, open-book accounting, total cost of ownership, target
costing, value chain analysis, etc.
Management Accounting research by making use of behavioral economics
This third theme helps us to get whole explanations about the causes and effects relationship of
management accounting by integrating the two theoretical perspectives namely, the neoclassical
economic and the psychology rather than placing reliance on either of these two perspectives.
Theory-consistent evidences are provided by this research on how management accounting
affects tradeoffs of an individual between the utility of monetary and nonmonetary payoffs
(Hopper & Bui, 2016). These nonmonetary payoffs can arise as a result o certain social
psychological preferences such as fairness, reciprocity, honesty and trust; cognitive

psychological limitations that might arises from bounded rationality like limited cognitive
ability, memory and effort; and affect, that may include moods and emotions.
How does competitive strategies influence MCS
Fourth theme of management accounting research investigates as to how the competitive
strategies can have an influence on management control systems, which mostly and primarily are
the balanced scorecard and levers of control (Myers, 2013). The management accounting
research on the control system named balanced scorecard principally investigates the effects of
common as well as unique measures of performance on managerial performance appraisal and
measures and methods as to how can more reliance be placed on these unique measures like
when an evaluator is provided with a strategy map (Ax & Greve, 2017). On the other hand,
research done on levers of control examines how and when organizations use the specified
number of four levers of control, in particular interactive and diagnostic controls, and their
effects on performance.
Management accounting relation with creativity and risk
Last but the newer theme of research is how to investigate relationship between management
accounting with that of creativity and risk. Established research has provided evidence of there
has been affect of management accounting on effort and performance, which is sensitive to
effort. Research on creativity has examined affect of budget targets and performance- contingent
compensation on the individual as well as on team creativity (Fullerton, Kennedy & Widener,
2013). There are certain different research studies to investigate how management accounting is
related to risk. Like investigation to know how budget goal difficulty can influence risk-taking
behavior and also provide evidence as to how controls are used to take the edge off risk in
strategic alliances.
FUTURE LEARNING FROM MANAGEMENT ACCOUNTING
RESEARCH
Comparable studies with more consistency
More researches in management accounting will result into more knowledge in this provided we
get more consistency in results of comparable studies. Since the comparable studies on different

and all management accounting topics is lower, the consistency of results becomes limited (Otley
& Emmanuel, 2013). When there arise such inconsistency between the results of the study and
results of comparable studies, the curiosity to ascertain the reason behind the occurrence of such
inconsistency arises and one likes to know how this could limit the established management
accounting knowledge production. Very importantly it is required to investigate the consistency
of research results so as to ensure that the established knowledge of management accounting
reproducible research requiring replications.
Replication of results of the study’s’ with higher consistency in results
Evidences are provided by the replications as to whether results of studies reproduce, this aspect
is essential and important, since there are various possibility of existence of reasons stating why
there is no replications of studies which appear to be valid and reliable (Smith, 2017). For
example study of analysis of accounting and auditing by authors Basu and Park’s which was
published in the Journal of Accounting & Economics, The Accounting Review and Journal of
Accounting Research, has indicated that the results are unlikely to replicate. The authors hereby
draws the implication from their analysis made in the studys’ that reliance is not required and
should not be placed on the outcomes of any single study. Such studies would even include those
published in the accounting journals with the highest-quality (Sheilds, 2015). Contrasting to this
thought, it is suggested that reliance should be placed instead on the combination consisting of
both original as well as replication studies that produced consistent results. This irreproducibility
of studies of accounting nature is also present in various other researches. The non-replication of
studies of non-accounting studies happens for various reasons, like cautiously seeking best or
falsified or fabricated results.
Replications with higher validity and reliability
Management accounting studies with the replications of higher validity and reliability levels are
valuable since the results of such studies may be inconsistent with those of others results which
are original or replication. Very common reason behind this might be that the researchers most
likely chose to or design such task and settings which occur favorable to their chosen hypotheses
rather than reporting explicitly all favoring factors. Therefore in such a case replication might
fail reproduction of original study’s results which will includes all conditions reported but not all

unreported favoring conditions (Sheilds, 2015). There are two purposes of replication, one is to
distinguish good from bad and other is more refined and improvised researches.
Extension of the studys’
Replications can form the base for extensions which might stretch to identify limiting conditions.
Features like reasons of non-replication of the results of any study would likely contribute to
establishing management accounting knowledge (Otley, 2016). A replication study is likely
required to identify as well as test reasons possible for inconsistency. It is likely to result in good
outcome to identify certain theory- based reasons providing more credibility to replication as
well as evidence on the causes and effects.
CONCLUSION
There will be higher production of established management accounting knowledge when the
replication studies are published, since they help in identifying non-replicable results of studies.
Higher motivation to improve the validity and reliability of the researches will eventually only
facilitates established MA knowledge production. The benefits of replication will be
identification of comparable studies with consistent results and reasons for inconsistency in
results; possibility of increased established management accounting knowledge and good
opportunities for students pursuing doctoral programs and improved proficiency for researchers.

REFERENCES
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Hopper, T., & Bui, B. (2016). Has management accounting research been critical?. Management
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Smith, M. (2017). Research methods in accounting. Sage.
Van der Stede, W. A. (2016). Management accounting in context: Industry, regulation and
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Yang, S., Yu, J., & Wang, X. (2016, January). Discussing on Management Accounting.
In International Conference on Accounting and Finance (AT). Proceedings (p. 5). Global
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